Rifka
by Silverswaninthemoonlight
Summary: The Story of Antonin Dolohov and his romance with a young muggle girl who lived in the same orphanage as he did. How she broke his heart when she was older, damaging it so much that he became hardened beyond caring. I own absolutely nothing but the OCs. Please don't sue me!
1. A Contamination

**Disclaimer: All story rights belong to JK Rowling.**

_Ever since I learned about who killed Remus Lupin, I slowly became interested in one of Voldemort's most faithful, feared followers. Antonin Dolohov. Who was he? What was he like as a child? What is the story behind the man who tortured countless muggles? Judging from the descriptions in the book, I had a slight hunch that he hated them much more than any of the other death eaters and not just because he thought he was their superior. So I began to imagine my own story for him. What happened in his past that molded him into the maniac we all know and loathe? So this is my idea of what happened. Please read and review._

A Contamination

One of the most prominent pureblood familes of all time in Russia is the Rostropovich family. They pride themselves on having the purest ancestry in Russia as well as their reputation for producing no squibs. They can trace their lineage back to Leo Tolstoy, awizard who is blessed with the fortune of being well known in the Muggle World, as well as the wizard world. The family is also a rarity as it is one f the few who have manged to become unrelated to the rest of the pure blood families in the county. Their family tree is in excellent condition as the family has not had to succumb to marrying it's own cousins in order to maintain blood purity or trying to hide or cover up family members who married muggles and produced. And their is not a single drop of non-magic blood in them. So it was incredibly outrageous (not to mention scandalous) when the Rostropovich's youngest son announced that he had impregnated a muggle girl.

"Are you meaning to tell me, that you implanted your magical secrets to a nonmagical being and created a filthy half-breed?" said Lord Rostropovich in a dangerously soft voice.

"Y-yes father" stammered Alexander.

"But she meant nothing to me. I swear! It was late one night at a party. I had had a few too many spirits. It just happened!. One minute, I was dancing around with her as my partner, the next, I woke up with her sleeping next to me! This was all a few months ago, I wasn't even sure of what happened and I just got up, and left her there I didn't even remember it until-"

"SILENCE!" thundered his father.

"You HAVE DISGRACED the Rostropovich family name! Your por judgement resulted in our beautiful family tree being contaminated by a filthy muggle! You have made us no better than those wall-eyed buck toothed inbred freaks who dare to call themselves pure-blooded!"

"Of Alexander, how COULD YOU?!" sobbed Lady Rostropovich who was sobbing heavily into a scrap of linen, trying to look delicate and proper. It was clear that she was finding it incredibly difficult to confine her immense sadness to the tiny, little cloth. Comforting her, were Alexander's two older brothers, Illya and Dmitri, between, indentical expressions of rage and exasperation, honed in on him.

"Look, if we could just obliviate her memory, and send her out to some foreign country, nobody would ever know that she had given birth to a Rostropovich child" protested Alexander.

"WE'LL know" said Illya.

"Yes, but nobody else would!" cried Alexander.

"It's only a contamination of the family tree if everybody knows about it!"

"MAKING US NO BETTER THAN THOSE #$#!#$ $%$^%$#(*&^%$# ! #$%^ WIZARD FAMILIES WHO DARE TO CLAIM THAT THEIR ANCESTRY IS PURE" Howled Dmitri. He had been silent up till now, but with every word that spouted out of Alexander's mouth,, he looked more and more ragefull, as though his wrath was getting harder and harder to contain.

"Well what do you suggest!" said Alexander angrily. He was fresh out of ideas and he was getting tired of his family moping around and screaming at him, without even attempting to find a solution to the situation.

"The whole family glared at him in silence, like a family of snakes, perhaps to remind him that he was the cause of the problem and that it was a bit rich of him to suggest a solution for it.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Lord Rostropovich spoke in a dejected, deadpan voice.

"Very well. I see no other alternative than to go through with Alexander's plan other than letting the truth get out and having our sparkling reputation, devasted. After all, when somebody has been bitten on the leg by a werewolf, you do not kill the patient. You merely cut off the leg."


	2. The Ragged Woman

The wind was howling and clawing at the trees. If they were still standing tall by morning, it would be living proof of magic. The former Mother Superior always did say that trees were blessed by the lord. Well, if that _was_ the case, the Superintendent would certainly find out for sure, tomorrow. The snow was falling heavily, encasing everywhere and everything from miles around. Anybody Out At This Time was a fool indeed!

"Ring! Ring!" clanged the orphanage bell.

"Good grief! The wind is even blowing around the bell people ring, at the front of the building when they want one of the sisters to come down to see them! It really is a windy night!" thought the Superintendent cheerfully, wrapped in a warm cocoon of blankets, her mind, numb and sluggish from the luxurious comfort, began to feel ever so slightly irked at the incessant ringing at the bell. At first she thought the wind was blowing it about, but as the hours trolled by, the bell seemed to be obtaining a note of desperation with each ring. As though it needed to alert somebody. As though it needed _Anybody_. **_Someone_** to hear it.

"Eh, attention seeking old bell" muttered the Superintendent grumpily, as she settled down into sleep, and dozed off, closing her mind to the frantic ringing of the bell. Forcing herself o turn a blind ear to the growing urgency resounding in each ring...

The next day, nobody in their right mind (assuming that they had just arrived at the orphanage) would have guessed that there had been a snowstorm. The village was still as a statue, calm and serene. The Mother Superior had managed to transfer her belief that the trees were indeed receiving the Lord's blessing, as every single one was still standing upright. The air was stagnant. There was not so much as a single breeze pervading the village.

"So why was the Orphanage Bell still clanging up a storm on it's own?" thought the Superintendent exasperatedly.

Was it suffering from post-trauma of being flung all over the countryside? (From the way it was ringing, it seemed a likely theory that that indeed was what the wind did to it)

There was no way the wind could still be pushing it around at that frequency. The only explanation was..

"(gasp!) Somebody is ringing the bell!" thought the Super, nearly going up like a rocket ship from her chair at the shock of the realization.

"Oh, my! What if whoever is ringing it was ringing it all night long?! They must have been freezing!" she thought worriedly as she quickly donned the traditional garments, women who took the veil are usually found wearing in public.

She slipped on her shoes and raced out of her room, down the stairs, and raced outside the building.

There, ringing the bell with every ounce of willpower in her body, was the most wretched, ragged woman the Super had ever seen (and living in a Christian orphanage, she had seen her share of poor, wretched women)

"But this woman made every single ragged slattern passing through these doors look like wealthy dowager duchesses" thought the Super.

Her hair was scandalously short for a woman, brittle-to-sight, and bizarrely frayed, like old yarn left in a dark cellar for ten year. It was thin, and worn, and her scalp was clearly visible to all. Her lips were so old and cracked, it was like looking at the courtyard floor. They were palest blue like a cartoon character's. Right now, her lips were thinly parted,creating leeway, for, short, desperate gasps to make desperate bids for freedom from her lungs.

Her eyes had a dull, and withdrawn characteristic, yet they were currently alight like the Orphanage's Christmas tree. Only instead of joy and light like the tree, they were alight with fear, sorrow, panic, anxiety, and the stubborn will to live.

Her face was completely bloodless as though she had seen an apparition from her past that she had hoped never to encounter again. It was snow white, with absolutely no trace of color on it. It was weather-beaten, thin, worn, gaunt, and bony, as though she'd been forced to part ways with the concept of eating for days. The haggard face was covered with line marks, making off a false misconception of her age. And it was clear to anybody with vision that she had hookworms.*

There were so many hardened lines around her scaly, claw-like hands. They were rough looking like a lizard's. They were also, coarse and bloody, as well as riddled with splinters from grasping the dirty matted rope used to ring the bell all right. Her clothes were thin and threadbare. A ragged shawl was draped around her shoulders, and it seemed as though the only apparel behind it was an incredibly worn out, shabby, far too small, dress of the poorest quality. If she had been standing out all night in that hell-sent snowstorm, the fact that she was still alive was nothing less than a miracle. If there was ever a living embodiment of misery or desperation, this woman was it.

The Super ran up to the woman, and draped her cloak around her.

"Goodness, darling how long have you been out here?" she inquired fussily, as she herded her into the building.

"All...night" she muttered so softly, the Super had to strain her ears to hear.

"Oh, my, you've surely caught your death of cold. Just_ look_ at those frost-bitten finger-joints!" the Super exclaimed.

The woman appeared to have exerted the last of her strength in answering the Super's rather silly question, or perhaps her body knew that it may strain itself no longer, as it was in good hands. Whatever the reason, she collapsed into the super's arms like a rag doll. She didn't ask her any more questions as she shepherded her into the infirmary.

As the Matron nearly fainted in shock of the state of her, the super laid her down on a bed. As she did so, she began to unravel her shawl, entwined around her scrawny frame so tightly, it seemed as though it would have squeezed her innards together. Suddenly, the Super led out an exclamation of shock.

"My GOODNESS! SISTER MABEL! THERE"S A _CHILD_ NURSING FROM HER BREAST!"

And sure enough, as the body of the woman was unraveled, suckling from her breast, plain as day, was a sickly-looking child with an oddly pointed face, discovered to be suckling at her teat. It appeared that the woman had sacrificed her own interests for the baby's. The Matron yanked him away from the mother (or rather, _pried_ him away, as his mouth was clamped rather tightly around the nipple)

It was indeed the oddest thing. Despite, the mother, who's body was like ice in midwinter, the offspring's own body, was warm and heated, as though it too had spent the night in the fireplace. It gave absolutely no indication that it had been suffering from the cold. In fact, it looked rather content. At least, until it had been removed from it's mother. Then it let forth a piercing, inhuman screech that shook the high heavens, and send cracks down the infirmary windows. The Super clamped her ears tightly shut around the unholy lamentation in a desperate (and one she feared might be all too late) attempt to keep her eardrums from tearing, and the matron pinched her eyes closed (in compensation for her ears) and whimpered.

The matron quickly hustled the woman's spawn off to one of the horrified assistants, and told her to quiet it. This particular one was a girl who had recently joined the convent after her family had sent her there to hush up a scandalous, illegitimate pregnancy. She'd given birth a few weeks ago, and her child was immediately hustled off to a loving family. But the girl as still churning out milk. Perhaps by feeding it, she could quiet it for a while.

"What was that...that...that-_thing_" cried the Super, appalled.

"I've heard my share of infants crying but that...that was like no other cry I've ever heard. It was not _human_."

"I-I-I don't know" whimpered the shaken Matron.

Trying to forget, the child, they redirected all of their efforts into making sure the woman was as comfortable as possible. It was quickly discovered that she was hanging onto life by a thread. It soon became evident that she was inflicted with pneumonia, as well as consumption. Her fever was rocketing off the face of the earth. Once she was reintroduced to warmth again, she began generating buckets of sweat rapidly and unyieldingly. She was growing delirious too, muttering things under her breath about somebody named "Alexander"

"If you please, darling" said the Matron gently, after her fever seemed to grow somewhat dormant.

"Could you please tell us who you are"

"Anna...Dolohov" mumbled the woman, putting in strenuous effort into staying aware of her surroundings.

"Anna Dolohov?" Asked the Matron politely

"21 years of age" she added quietly.

The woman probably was lucid enough to know that she didn't have enough time left on this earth. Making the correct assumption that her offspring would be raised by the nuns, she seemed to want to disclose as much information about herself as possible, making it easier to raise him.

"Dear, you've got an accent. That tells me you're not from these parts" prodded the Matron gently

"Russian" Anna gasped. That would explain why she'd gone to an Orphanage for Russian children.

"Now how did you end up in here? Tell me you didn't walk"

"Walked...hid...in...train...cars...got...rides...for...favors...earned...money...through...favors"

"You don't mean to tell me that you sold you're own body out? Sinful!" cried the Matron, forgetting her sympathetic bedside nature for a moment"

"No...choice...forgiveness...god?" she whimpered softly.

"Yes, yes, all is forgiven" muttered the Matron, resuming her bedside manner.

"Now, do you want to tell me why you came to England? To live with a relative? Do you want me to send your..._child_? to him?"

"No...relatives...orphan" Anna replied, sounding as though she was reciting words from a play**

"Well, why did you want to come to England?"

"Lifelong...dream...no...chance...for good life...in Russia"

"Wh-w-well, what about your baby"

"Wanted...him...better...life"

"I see. So...it's a...boy? You said? Does he have a name?"

"Three...months...of age...name...Antonin!" she cried out., in a final sputter of life. And then her eyes glazed over.

"Poor soul..." murmured the Matron kindly, sending up a silent prayer from heaven to look after her soul. Since the infant she'd left behind was still very young, she assigned the Assistant she'd hustled him off onto, as his wet nurse.

"Bit strange, how weak she was, yet her child was so full" she proclaimed to the other Sisters some weeks later.

"She couldn't have not eaten, all that way there" muttered another sister.

"She probably would have managed to survive the consumption and pneumonia, you know, had her body not been so frail" commented Sister Scherbatsky

"She probably was giving all her food to her infant son" sagely replied Sister Kirova

And the nuns were content with that theory for a while.

Until a few weeks later, when the Novice, assigned to be the infant's wt nurse was found dead later, incredibly weak and skinny. Underfed. Another Novice found her corpse on the floor, with the infant in her arms, crying from the sudden withdrawal of milk.

"She couldn't have been starving herself' said the same Novice who'd found her.

"I saw her eat, just as much as the rest of us, no more, no less"

"From the look of her body, one would think she'd stopped eating for a week" muttered the Mother Superior.

"I saw the child she was nursing in her arms. She died nursing it"

"His mother was in the same condition when we found her. Nearly dead, with him drinking from her all night long"

It didn't take long for a new conclusion to take place among the orphanage. It was flying all over, the place, contacting even the orphans. The nuns weaned the infant off of milk from then on. The other orphans stayed clear away from him. The older ones were found desperately trying to put a pillow over his face. They claimed that "He's evil" "He talks at night" "We hear scary voices near his crib" "We've started having really scary nightmares ever since he came" Then came the outbreak of pneumonia and consumption among the children sleeping in his ward. Then came the typhus, then the measles. Then the tuberculosis. All diseases in which the infant was afflicted with first.

A new rumor started spreading around, complementing the previous one; the child brought in by the dying woman was no less than the Devil's own.

*A parasite obtained usually through walking on contaminated soil in farms. As the orphanage is in a rather urban part of England, this implies that the woman had been walking a very long way to get to the orphanage

**The Rostropovich family put a_ Confundus_ charm on Anna, making her believe that she was an orphaned girl, who's life's dream was to go to England, (similar to what Hermione did with her parents) and made her first memory after the obliviation, hitchhiking on a goods train rolling West. Then, they _obliviated_ every body in their village's memories of her, including her family.


	3. Rifka

The wind was howling and clawing at the trees. If they were still standing tall by morning, it would be living proof of magic. The former Mother Superior always did say that trees were blessed by the lord. Well, if that _was_ the case, the Superintendent would certainly find out for sure, tomorrow. The snow was falling heavily, encasing everywhere and everything from miles around. Anybody Out At This Time was a fool indeed!

"Ring! Ring!" clanged the orphanage bell.

"Good grief! The wind is even blowing around the bell people ring, at the front of the building when they want one of the sisters to come down to see them! It really is a windy night!" thought the Superintendent cheerfully, wrapped in a warm cocoon of blankets, her mind, numb and sluggish from the luxurious comfort, began to feel ever so slightly irked at the incessant ringing at the bell. At first she thought the wind was blowing it about, but as the hours trolled by, the bell seemed to be obtaining a note of desperation with each ring. As though it needed to alert somebody. As though it needed _Anybody_. **_Someone_** to hear it.

"Eh, attention seeking old bell" muttered the Superintendent grumpily, as she settled down into sleep, and dozed off, closing her mind to the frantic ringing of the bell. Forcing herself o turn a blind ear to the growing urgency resounding in each ring...

The next day, nobody in their right mind (assuming that they had just arrived at the orphanage) would have guessed that there had been a snowstorm. The village was still as a statue, calm and serene. The Mother Superior had managed to transfer her belief that the trees were indeed receiving the Lord's blessing, as every single one was still standing upright. The air was stagnant. There was not so much as a single breeze pervading the village.

"So why was the Orphanage Bell still clanging up a storm on it's own?" thought the Superintendent exasperatedly.

Was it suffering from post-trauma of being flung all over the countryside? (From the way it was ringing, it seemed a likely theory that that indeed was what the wind did to it)

There was no way the wind could still be pushing it around at that frequency. The only explanation was..

"(gasp!) Somebody is ringing the bell!" thought the Super, nearly going up like a rocket ship from her chair at the shock of the realization.

"Oh, my! What if whoever is ringing it was ringing it all night long?! They must have been freezing!" she thought worriedly as she quickly donned the traditional garments, women who took the veil are usually found wearing in public.

She slipped on her shoes and raced out of her room, down the stairs, and raced outside the building.

There, ringing the bell with every ounce of willpower in her body, was the most wretched, ragged woman the Super had ever seen (and living in a Christian orphanage, she had seen her share of poor, wretched women)

"But this woman made every single ragged slattern passing through these doors look like wealthy dowager duchesses" thought the Super.

Her hair was scandalously short for a woman, brittle-to-sight, and bizarrely frayed, like old yarn left in a dark cellar for ten year. It was thin, and worn, and her scalp was clearly visible to all. Her lips were so old and cracked, it was like looking at the courtyard floor. They were palest blue like a cartoon character's. Right now, her lips were thinly parted,creating leeway, for, short, desperate gasps to make desperate bids for freedom from her lungs.

Her eyes had a dull, and withdrawn characteristic, yet they were currently alight like the Orphanage's Christmas tree. Only instead of joy and light like the tree, they were alight with fear, sorrow, panic, anxiety, and the stubborn will to live.

Her face was completely bloodless as though she had seen an apparition from her past that she had hoped never to encounter again. It was snow white, with absolutely no trace of color on it. It was weather-beaten, thin, worn, gaunt, and bony, as though she'd been forced to part ways with the concept of eating for days. The haggard face was covered with line marks, making off a false misconception of her age. And it was clear to anybody with vision that she had hookworms.*

There were so many hardened lines around her scaly, claw-like hands. They were rough looking like a lizard's. They were also, coarse and bloody, as well as riddled with splinters from grasping the dirty matted rope used to ring the bell all right. Her clothes were thin and threadbare. A ragged shawl was draped around her shoulders, and it seemed as though the only apparel behind it was an incredibly worn out, shabby, far too small, dress of the poorest quality. If she had been standing out all night in that hell-sent snowstorm, the fact that she was still alive was nothing less than a miracle. If there was ever a living embodiment of misery or desperation, this woman was it.

The Super ran up to the woman, and draped her cloak around her.

"Goodness, darling how long have you been out here?" she inquired fussily, as she herded her into the building.

"All...night" she muttered so softly, the Super had to strain her ears to hear.

"Oh, my, you've surely caught your death of cold. Just_ look_ at those frost-bitten finger-joints!" the Super exclaimed.

The woman appeared to have exerted the last of her strength in answering the Super's rather silly question, or perhaps her body knew that it may strain itself no longer, as it was in good hands. Whatever the reason, she collapsed into the super's arms like a rag doll. She didn't ask her any more questions as she shepherded her into the infirmary.

As the Matron nearly fainted in shock of the state of her, the super laid her down on a bed. As she did so, she began to unravel her shawl, entwined around her scrawny frame so tightly, it seemed as though it would have squeezed her innards together. Suddenly, the Super led out an exclamation of shock.

"My GOODNESS! SISTER MABEL! THERE"S A _CHILD_ NURSING FROM HER BREAST!"

And sure enough, as the body of the woman was unraveled, suckling from her breast, plain as day, was a sickly-looking child with an oddly pointed face, discovered to be suckling at her teat. It appeared that the woman had sacrificed her own interests for the baby's. The Matron yanked him away from the mother (or rather, _pried_ him away, as his mouth was clamped rather tightly around the nipple)

It was indeed the oddest thing. Despite, the mother, who's body was like ice in midwinter, the offspring's own body, was warm and heated, as though it too had spent the night in the fireplace. It gave absolutely no indication that it had been suffering from the cold. In fact, it looked rather content. At least, until it had been removed from it's mother. Then it let forth a piercing, inhuman screech that shook the high heavens, and send cracks down the infirmary windows. The Super clamped her ears tightly shut around the unholy lamentation in a desperate (and one she feared might be all too late) attempt to keep her eardrums from tearing, and the matron pinched her eyes closed (in compensation for her ears) and whimpered.

The matron quickly hustled the woman's spawn off to one of the horrified assistants, and told her to quiet it. This particular one was a girl who had recently joined the convent after her family had sent her there to hush up a scandalous, illegitimate pregnancy. She'd given birth a few weeks ago, and her child was immediately hustled off to a loving family. But the girl as still churning out milk. Perhaps by feeding it, she could quiet it for a while.

"What was that...that...that-_thing_" cried the Super, appalled.

"I've heard my share of infants crying but that...that was like no other cry I've ever heard. It was not _human_."

"I-I-I don't know" whimpered the shaken Matron.

Trying to forget, the child, they redirected all of their efforts into making sure the woman was as comfortable as possible. It was quickly discovered that she was hanging onto life by a thread. It soon became evident that she was inflicted with pneumonia, as well as consumption. Her fever was rocketing off the face of the earth. Once she was reintroduced to warmth again, she began generating buckets of sweat rapidly and unyieldingly. She was growing delirious too, muttering things under her breath about somebody named "Alexander"

"If you please, darling" said the Matron gently, after her fever seemed to grow somewhat dormant.

"Could you please tell us who you are"

"Anna...Dolohov" mumbled the woman, putting in strenuous effort into staying aware of her surroundings.

"Anna Dolohov?" Asked the Matron politely

"21 years of age" she added quietly.

The woman probably was lucid enough to know that she didn't have enough time left on this earth. Making the correct assumption that her offspring would be raised by the nuns, she seemed to want to disclose as much information about herself as possible, making it easier to raise him.

"Dear, you've got an accent. That tells me you're not from these parts" prodded the Matron gently

"Russian" Anna gasped. That would explain why she'd gone to an Orphanage for Russian children.

"Now how did you end up in here? Tell me you didn't walk"

"Walked...hid...in...train...cars...got...rides...for...favors...earned...money...through...favors"

"You don't mean to tell me that you sold you're own body out? Sinful!" cried the Matron, forgetting her sympathetic bedside nature for a moment"

"No...choice...forgiveness...god?" she whimpered softly.

"Yes, yes, all is forgiven" muttered the Matron, resuming her bedside manner.

"Now, do you want to tell me why you came to England? To live with a relative? Do you want me to send your..._child_? to him?"

"No...relatives...orphan" Anna replied, sounding as though she was reciting words from a play**

"Well, why did you want to come to England?"

"Lifelong...dream...no...chance...for good life...in Russia"

"Wh-w-well, what about your baby"

"Wanted...him...better...life"

"I see. So...it's a...boy? You said? Does he have a name?"

"Three...months...of age...name...Antonin!" she cried out., in a final sputter of life. And then her eyes glazed over.

"Poor soul..." murmured the Matron kindly, sending up a silent prayer from heaven to look after her soul. Since the infant she'd left behind was still very young, she assigned the Assistant she'd hustled him off onto, as his wet nurse.

"Bit strange, how weak she was, yet her child was so full" she proclaimed to the other Sisters some weeks later.

"She couldn't have not eaten, all that way there" muttered another sister.

"She probably would have managed to survive the consumption and pneumonia, you know, had her body not been so frail" commented Sister Scherbatsky

"She probably was giving all her food to her infant son" sagely replied Sister Kirova

And the nuns were content with that theory for a while.

Until a few weeks later, when the Novice, assigned to be the infant's wt nurse was found dead later, incredibly weak and skinny. Underfed. Another Novice found her corpse on the floor, with the infant in her arms, crying from the sudden withdrawal of milk.

"She couldn't have been starving herself' said the same Novice who'd found her.

"I saw her eat, just as much as the rest of us, no more, no less"

"From the look of her body, one would think she'd stopped eating for a week" muttered the Mother Superior.

"I saw the child she was nursing in her arms. She died nursing it"

"His mother was in the same condition when we found her. Nearly dead, with him drinking from her all night long"

It didn't take long for a new conclusion to take place among the orphanage. It was flying all over, the place, contacting even the orphans. The nuns weaned the infant off of milk from then on. The other orphans stayed clear away from him. The older ones were found desperately trying to put a pillow over his face. They claimed that "He's evil" "He talks at night" "We hear scary voices near his crib" "We've started having really scary nightmares ever since he came" Then came the outbreak of pneumonia and consumption among the children sleeping in his ward. Then came the typhus, then the measles. Then the tuberculosis. All diseases in which the infant was afflicted with first.

A new rumor started spreading around, complementing the previous one; the child brought in by the dying woman was no less than the Devil's own.

*A parasite obtained usually through walking on contaminated soil in farms. As the orphanage is in a rather urban part of England, this implies that the woman had been walking a very long way to get to the orphanage

**The Rostropovich family put a_ Confundus_ charm on Anna, making her believe that she was an orphaned girl, who's life's dream was to go to England, (similar to what Hermione did with her parents) and made her first memory after the obliviation, hitchhiking on a goods train rolling West. Then, they _obliviated_ every body in their village's memories of her, including her family.


	4. The Girl With The Funny Eyes

"YOU LOOK THAT WAY I LOOK ON OTHER SIDE!" roared Dolohov. For the first time in twelve years, his blood was running, adrenaline was pumping through his veins, and he felt excited. True, he had been out of Azkaban for a few months but they had all been spent in the secret room in Malfoy Manor. It was small, dense, and wasn't much better than Azkaban. At least in Azkaban, he had his own cell and got to eat all the food himself.

There was absolutely no light in it, unless you counted the times when Narcissa Black (Lucius's wife and Bellatrix's simpering sister) came up with a candle and some food. She never said anything. Just opened the door, scooted in, placed down the food, and swept out as quickly as she had arrived, stopping only to throw a fleeting glance of disgust at them fighting like dogs over the food. Dolohov never was particularly good with family interactions considering that he was an orphan. But if Narcissa was happy to see Bellatrix for the first time in twelve years, or was even aware of her presence for that matter, she certainly made no implication of it. She never made any eye contact with any of them and if she did, she would make a little hacking noise in the back of her throat as though she were choking and march out. If she hadn't placed the food down yet, she would march out the door, with it still in her hand. As though feeding people was far too much of an ordeal for her. That's why nobody ever tried to make eye contact with her, and acted like she was invisible until she had gone. It was quite torturous having to ignore your meal as it was being served, when you had been rotting in prison for as long as he had been. Self-righteous old harlot probably thought they were lazy, low-down mongrels. Thought she was better than they were, did she? Well, she was more than welcome to spend over a decade in that filthy stinkhole Azkaban and come out looking all regal and haughty. Then again, considering that her sister had managed to do it, she probably could too.

"She _should_ have been in there!" thought Dolohov angrily. "At least her sister went to prison, standing by her beliefs! She was so devoted to her cause, that she chose Azkaban if it meant that the Dark Lord would know of her loyalty!" Dolohov didn't particularly like Bellatrix, but he respected her for that.

If Dolohov remembered correctly, the last time that he and the death eaters had been in Malfoy Manor before that rat bastard, Karkaroff had sold all of them out in order to save his own stinking hide there was a large, fairly spacious chamber below the drawing room that was filled with dark artifacts. That was the place that the last meeting ever held by the Death Eaters before the Fall of the Dark Lord.

"Why we not stay in Room with Dark Artifacts?" Dolohov had demanded from Lucius Malfoy, right before he shut them all up. (His English was very broken, having forgotten most of it, due to spending the last twelve years opening his mouth only to eat, breath, and beg for mercy from the Dementors in his mother tongue)

"Three years ago, that Muggle-loving imbecile, Arthur Weasley ordered a raid for Dark Artifacts on Malfoy Manor. Usually, he always missed the Secret Chamber by a mile, but that filthy brat of his somehow found out and tipped him off about it. He knew exactly where to look, going straight to the drawing room, and finding the secret passage as though he knew exactly where it was!" snapped Malfoy.

"They confiscated every single Dark Artifact that has been handed down from Generation to Generation of Malfoys and boarded up the room, sealing it off permanently!" he roared, more wrapped up in the outrage of having been finally outwitted by that moronic blood-traitor than actually getting the point across to Dolohov. He got the gist of it, however, and was smart enough not to ask anymore questions.

For months on end, the ten death eaters were crammed up into the tiny little room on the third floor, all squashed up against each other. Sometimes weeks would roll by without nothing interesting ever happening. The most notable occurrence had been when they had first arrived. Augustus Rookwood, a slimy-haired, long-nosed, pock faced man with a whiny, nasal voice that would have harmonized beautifully with nails on a chalkboard, was sent for by the Dark Lord. Five minutes later, he came back looking so proud and haughty, Dolohov ached to slap him across his ratty face. But he didn't. he just asked him "Why did Dark Lord want you?"

"I have just rewarded the Dark Lord with some _very_ valuable information. He has spent months on a scheme that would have been completely unreachable had it not been for your's truly sending him in the right direction. Oh and he's not very happy with Avery. Don't expect to see him around" He added with infuriating relish.

Dolohov bristled with rage at each word that came out of the slimy blemish's mouth. Each one sounded more and more conceited and puffed up than the last one. He might as well have been smoking out of a hookah pipe.

"Cough up" was all he said in reply.

"Oh all right" he said he said with an extremely false air of reluctance.

"For the past few months the Dark Lord has been attempting to obtain a prophecy about his fate with Harry Potter, that stupid brat who somehow managed to defeat him and is the reason we were all sent to that hellish pit Azkaban.."

"We know who Harry Potter is!" snapped Rabastan Lestrange, Bellatrix's Brother-in-Law.

"We don't need _you_ to remind us! We just need you to tell us what the prophecy is about"

"Well, the Prophecy is hidden deep within the Bowels of the Department of Mysteries. And since the Dark Lord knows I have expertise in this subject, as I once did hold an illustrious position of working in it for longer than before some of you were even born..."

"Keep going or I rip out your throat and drink your blood, _Augy_" snarled Bellatrix. She wasn't joking.

Rookwood gulped and began to hurriedly finish the story, all haughtiness and conceit gone with the wind.

"Er-well, The Dark Lord has been trying to imperius people into going into the D.O.M to retrieve it for him. Twice. The first person was caught and hauled off to Azkaban But...but the second actually made it...but there's all these spells around it...Defensive ones. because the only one who can retrieve a prophecy is the person who it was made about...so the second Imperii, Bode got hit with all these spells that made the curse lift and his brain go all funny so he wound up in St. Mungos, causing a whole lot of confusion. But, it's ok because Lucius Malfoy took care of him. And then I just told The Dark Lord the truth about it and he's going to try to hatch a new plan and..." Rookwood concluded his retelling with another gulp of air, an apprehensive glance at Bellatrix and wrapped it up with "That's it"


	5. The Girl With The Funny Eyes Part 2

After what seemed like centuries, crammed up in the attic of Malfoy Manor, the death eaters were called into action. Narcissa had opened the door and coldly said "Lucius requests your presence" in a voice so cold that it could have given a Dementor, competition. She then turned towards the door, preparing to march out, as though she had simply placed down some food as always. Dolohov wasn't sure if what she had said was real or a figment of his imagination. Despite his best efforts to preserve his sanity, he found that the once simple task was becoming harder and harder each day. Whatever the reason, it looked as though Narcissa seemed to be under the impression that the Death Eaters could follow her out if they wanted to, or rot in the cellar for all eternity. She didn't seem as though she was going to make them change their mind. Dolohov wasn't going to take any chances. He wasn't spending another minute in this filthy, hell a second longer, whether it was his imagination or not. He ran behind Narcissa, close at her heels. Several other Death Eaters seemed to share his mindset, so they ran after them.

"Flith" he heard Narcissa mutter under her breath, when they were halfway down the stairs. Dolohov snapped like a brittle wand.

Pinning her to a wall, he grabbed her by the neckline of her elaborate, evening dress. That woman just simply stared at him as though she'd found him at the bottom of well.

"Conceited vixen" he snarled in his face.

"I spend twelve years prison, serving Dark Lord while your slimy husband betray him! You want know loyalty? You spend part of life in Azkaban with Dementors sucking happiness out you. _Only thing I have getting me to next day is hope Dark Lord return!_ You have no right to sneer at elders and betters! I alive before your father ever meet your mother! I serve Dark Lord my whole life!_ I serve Dark Lord when you are no more than whining little brat in cradle! And you have guts to sneer at me! You-"_

" That's enough, Dolohov" sneered Lucius Malfoy from the foot of the stairs. If he was upset, alarmed, or even furious at the manhandling of his wife, he certainly did a wonderful job of not showing it.

Somehow or the other, Dolohov was persuaded to unhand the wretched woman (he had a hunch that some wand drawing had taken place) Everything was going by in somewhat of a blur. Spending so many months in that accursed attic had made Dolohov a bit delirious and he was having difficulty remembering things that occured right then. It was such a change from his adapted routine of darkness. All Dolohov knew was that one minute, he had his wand pointed at Lucius's Wife's trachea, the next he was in the Malfoy living room, standing next to the other Death Eaters in a circular formation around Malfoy

"The Dark Lord has concocted a wise plan to obtain the prophecy determining his fate with Harry Potter that he has coveted for months. He has finally taken the liberty of educating you Neanderthals about it" Lucius drawled. Dolohov and every other Death Eater's hand grasped inside their robes.

"The Dark Lord has recently become aware of a special connection he serves with Harry Potter, enabling the latter to look inside his mind. How he is able to, the Dark Lord is not even aware of. But he has most cunningly crafted a plan to use this ability to manipulate Potter to his advantage"

"Now listen closely as well as you can, as I'm not going to trouble myself with explaining this more than once" he continued

"The Dark Lord has planted a false memory into his own mind, knowing full well that Potter will be able to see it. Taking advantage of his idiotic "Gryffindor Courage" and pathetic love of playing the hero, the memory will lure Potter into the Ministry of Magic in London (_that's_ where the Department of Mysteries_ is_) and enter it, retrieving the prophecy. Once he does so, it will be obtainable for anybody. The moment the brat closes his fingers around _it_, we shall close in on _him,_ force him to hand it over, and keep him tied up for the Dark Lord to finish him off"

"Now I _do_ hope that wasn't _too_ difficult to comprehend?" he added in a voice filled to the brim with mock concern. It would have been so easy to pull out your wand and _Avada Kedavra_ him. he wouldn't have even known what hit him.

Dolohov's next recollection was him at the Ministry of Magic (the only time he had ever been there was when he was at his hearing, being sentenced to life in Azkaban. His last memory before he got dragged out on that cursed island) and he was all decked out in his Death Eater's robes, complete with a mask. The Death Eaters were all pointing their wands out at Potter. The plan had worked so easily, that the dark Lord himself, must have been amazed. Potter had indeed showed up at the Ministry (how, he wasn't sure) and had indeed closed his fingers around the small, crystal ball that would reveal every answer the Dark Lord needed to defeat the boy. It was difficult to see too well out of these masks, but judging by what Lucius Malfoy was saying, the boy had been stupid enough to bring a bunch of his friends along. Perfect. The moment they caught one of them, they could use it as a hostage.

Five minutes later, they were all running after Harry, splitting up and dividing, in order to catch him and his friends. Dolohov was paired with Jugson, a rather pudgy man who looked more like a fat schoolboy than a cold-blooded killer, yet could perform the _avada kedavra_ curse better than anybody he had ever seen (except for the Dark Lord of course)

"YOU LOOK THAT WAY I LOOK ON OTHER SIDE!" he roared at Jugson. He had just seen two girls dart behind one of the shelves. Perfect. Girls were easy targets. Weak. Susceptible to torture. And these ones looked young. There was no way they could have been older than fourteen. Grab hold of them and Potter would hand over the prophecy, just like that!

"Love" thought Dolohov contemptuously.

"Why people want to fight for it is beyond me. All it does is make you weak and vulnerable"

He remembered a time when he was torturing a Ministry Official for information about something or the other. The official had stubbornly refused, despite threats of death, and being submitted to the Cruciatus Curse. It was like trying to reason with a brick wall. That is, until Dolohov had brought in his young son. One shot of the Cruciatus curse on the brat had the official wailing, whining , and wringing his hands, ready to spill the deepest, darkest secrets of his soul if it meant that the boy's torture cease. It was quite funny really. You try to fight the Dark Lord with love and he just as easily uses it against you. You are literally providing him with a weapon more useful than the Cruciatus Curse"

Dolohov ran behind a shelf, after noticing a patter of footprints. He heard the frantic footsteps, and then they stopped just like that.

"A dead end" grinned Dolohov.

"I've got you now"

He ran quickly down the shelf, in case the girl tried to make a break for it. It was hard to see, what with the only light in the place coming from those softly glowing crystal balls.

"_Lumos_" muttered Dolohov and pointed his wand out in front of him. Immediately, the entire aisle was illuminated by his wand. Dolohov found it still difficult to see with the stupid mask and ripped it off in frustration, wanting to get a good look at his hostage.

And then he froze. His entire heart and lungs turned to ice. His stomach turned inside-out.

He was looking at his hostage in the eyes. It was a girl. No older than fourteen. Her eyes were a milky, gray color, not unlike the light radiiated from the Prophecys, but they had a hint of blue mixed in. Her hair was a pale gold, seemingly spun from raw moonlight itself. It couldn't be...yet...She looked absolutely nothing like her-"

"Rifka..." breathed Antonin.

It was though he was looking at a teenage version of her. Only...a ghostly version. All of her features seemed otherworldly, ethereal. Rifka's lustrous golden tresses seemed almost translucent. Her sea-blue eyes had almost all their color seeped out of them. They seemed as though they had seen into the next world. Dreamy. As though she no longer was troubled by trivial human tribulations. As though she'd evolved in thought, As though she was a higher being. A ghost, an apparition. This was further accentuated by her figure being illuminated by the lights of the crystal balls...

"Dolohov!" bellowed an uncouth, voice, which Dolohov recognized as Jugson's.

"You got her?"

All Dolohov had to do was to stun her, call Jugson, and they could use her as bait to catch Harry Potter. Dolohov could even use his signature, purple-flame curse on her. She'd crumple to the ground. She'd be out for several hours, and when she woke up, she'd be traumatized beyond repair. All he had to do was wave his wand and call out...

"There's nobody down here, Jugson" called Dolohov, painfully aware of the lump in his throat, desperately trying to conceal it from his voice.

The girl looked slightly puzzled, as though she was trying to solve a problem which was well within her means of achieving the answer to. Dolohov couldn't bear to look at her any longer. He turned, and strode out of the corridor, but he could feel her puzzled eyes on him, all the way to the end of it.


End file.
